Good Mental Concept

I've often said that one of the jobs of a voice teacher is to learn how our students think. Sometimes, what a word means to me, and what it means to my student are very different things. I've had to learn how to present vocal ideas to a man who suffered 70% hearing loss as a child. I've had to learn how to speak so that a dancer can comprehend vocal imagery. I've had to learn how to follow a young woman who grew up speaking Mandarin Chinese. Sometimes I wish I could read minds; it would make the job so much easier.

Studying in Germany, I met a lot of singers; professional, successful, struggling, amateurs, you name it. I remember one day a tenor was coming in for his lesson as I was leaving. He was walking with a limp, and apologized for  even being there, since he knew he wasn't going to be able to sing that day. Our teacher, Mike Rhodes, asked him what was wrong, since there was no hint of hoarseness in his speaking voice. No, no, it wasn't his voice. He'd hurt his right foot, and so, couldn't sing. Asked what that had to do with singing, he replied that he sang with his right foot. I suggested that perhaps he could try singing with his left. And, while that made our teacher laugh, the tenor did not appreciate the comment.

Mike had an open studio. This meant that his students were allowed, even encouraged, to sit in on one another's lessons. You can learn a lot from someone else's problems. I was sitting in on a tenor's lesson. (Why is it always tenors?) He was really struggling with one note in an aria. Not a verse, not a phrase. One note.  It was a high note. As I recall, it was a B, just a half-step below the infamous high-C. This particular note needed to be very soft, and hang effortlessly in the air. 


Or that was the idea. After 20 minutes of struggling with this effortless note, the poor tenor was just about ready to give up. Either that or throw our teacher and his piano out the window. I felt for both of them. Mike had tried just about every technique he could think of to pull this note out of this tenor. And the tenor was failing, in front of an audience - me. Finally, in desperation, the man volunteered to try one last thing. He didn't care if it worked or not, they were going to finish the aria this time. I still remember how that note sounded: it was so soft, it hung on the air, as if it had always been there, just waiting for this man to pluck it out. It was effortless, it was beautiful. He finished the aria, and asked if that had been right. Reassured that it had been, he turned to Mike, and demanded: "Why didn't you just tell me it was a green note?"

These two stories have a couple of things in common. They both took place in the studio of my teacher in Germany, they both involve tenors, and most important for the moment: they both involve mental concept. 


Unless the singer knows where the note should be in their voice, and unless they know how it should sound, they are merely rolling the dice in the crap shoot of vocal production. A pianist has it easy. I can go to any piano in the world, and find middle-C. And provided that piano is in tune, it will always sound exactly the same. Voices are different. Middle-C may be out of reach for some basses, or bottoming out for some sopranos. And, to make things interesting, it will be in a slightly different place in your voice from one day to the next. All of this will depend on how much sleep you got, whether you had tea or coffee with your breakfast, what kind of green-growing-thing is currently blooming, and the relative humidity. All of this combines to make singing on pitch unbelievably complicated.


This can be dealt with simply by trial and error. And let me tell you, there's a lot of error! When I miss a note, the entire neighborhood knows about it! Fortunately, by this point, I don't miss that many. 


The singer also needs to know how much of the chest voice to carry up into each note, and how much of the head voice to carry down. This can not only change by day, but can be different in each song. Are you getting the feeling that this is a very difficult skill? 


Good. Because it is, and it needs to become automatic. Someone told me once that the number of computations that we accomplish each moment we are driving a car is literally mind-boggling:  speed, trajectories, Newton's laws, the list is almost endless. And, yet, we do it, day in, day out. The same for singing - except that hopefully, no one's life is endangered when we sing.


And on top of all that, there is the quality of the note: not just hitting it full out, but that elusive green note: the note that just hangs there, softly and effortlessly. And without a qualified teacher to tell you when you have found that note - to be your ears outside of your body - you can't be certain that you've found that quality.

Hmm. . . what shall I post about next week? Tune in and see!

Proper Focus

Herr Weinsinger used to say that in order to really practice these elements, we needed to memorize them. And not just memorize for a test, but really know them. He wanted to be able to call us in the middle of the night, waking us out of a sound sleep, ask, "What are the 5 basic elements of singing?" and have each of us rattle them off in our sleep. He also felt that the elements that you had the most trouble remembering were the ones that needed the most work.There were those at the university who thought he was nuts, and he may have been, but that doesn't mean he wasn't right.

My posture was always pretty good. Relaxation of the vocal mechanism was a bear; in my early days, I was a very tense singer. Breathing was easy: I'm lucky in that I've always breathed properly. Proper focus, though, was always another bear.

This is also where the basic elements get more subjective. The first 3 are physical, and even though they can be very difficult, they are pretty much "cut-and-dried." You are either doing them right, or you're not. But proper focus is all caught up in how we think.

Let's start with this: your tone needs to be in the facial masque, or sinus cavities. This is also known as putting a spin in the voice. And how do we do this? I'm going to reuse a picture from my blog on Element 2. See the soft palate? That needs to raise. (To find out how to do this, go back to that blog. It's all there.)

By raising the soft palate, we can "place" the voice in the facial masque. At any rate, we think we can; it feels like we have. The problem is that the voice hasn't actually moved anywhere. What we're doing is changing the shape of our resonator. What's a resonator?

* sigh *

I was afraid you'd ask that. Are you ready? A resonator may be defined as a secondary vibrator which is set into motion by the main vibrator and which adds its own characteristics to the generated sound waves." (I stole that from the Wikipedia article Vocal Resonation. Whoever said that singers were stupid? Oh yeah: I said that. Oops!) What that means for us is this: our main vibrators are the vocal cords, which set in motion our secondary vibrator, the nasal cavity.

This is where having a qualified teacher becomes vital. A teacher provides ears outside of your own body to tell you when you have achieved the right sound. Internally, it can actually sound like there is a grating, raspy edge to the voice. But, externally, it sounds full, and gives the voice the ringing quality that we want in the voiceIt helps the voice carry over longer distances, and even over orchestras. While this often seems like it's giving the voice more volume, I think it also raises the frequencies the voice produces. You get another story.

Not terribly long ago, I was a music director for several services at the Kirtland Air Force Base Chapel. While I was there, a brand new sound board was installed. I didn't really have much to do with it, but I was expected to begin to use the microphones that dotted the raised altar area. I tried to explain to the chaplains that no one wanted me near a mic. They ignored me, and reminded me to work with the sound guys on the settings for me. I tried to explain to the sound guys. They told me that Britney Spears couldn't blow out the sound board, and so I didn't need to worry.

Britney Spears.

Really. I wish I was making that up.

The following Sunday, I stood at the podium to sing the Psalm for the Catholic Mass. I promise, I wasn't singing loudly. Aware of the microphone a foot away from my mouth, I was singing very softly. But, my voice is properly focused. After the first verse, the mic went dead. And then there was a very loud popping sound. I noticed the sound man in the balcony motioning me to go on.

I could tell that my mic was dead, so I sang a little louder to finish the Psalm. I found out later that I had over-powered my microphone, and caused a cascade that red-lined every mic up there, including the lapel-mics attached to the chaplain's shirt. I hadn't done that with volume, but with frequency.

We call this focus because it can feel like you are focusing the voice behind your cheeks. Sometimes it also helps to visualize a cone projecting from your mouth, coming to a point somewhere in front of you. The farther you want your voice to project, the longer your cone needs to be.

Often, for the beginning singer, the voice will come into focus on one note in one song. The trick is to keep that feeling for longer than the one note. This can take months. You work, and work, and struggle, and fight, and one day, it happens. And it's easy, and it's fun, and feels really good. That's usually when it's right. (You knew there had to be a reason for all this work, right? When it's right, it is so much fun!)

The second point in Proper Focus tells us that on high notes, the focus becomes even tighter, as is put right on the bridge of the nose. The focus moves from the facial masque, even more forward and up. Dramatic soprano Eileen Farrell once likened hitting a high-C to feeling like she was going to throw up. It's possible she was referring to how open the throat needs to be. Hopefully, she wasn't throwing up on the bridge of her nose, 'cause that would have been gross.

Like I said before, it's all how you think.

Next time: Good Mental Concept